Big Data Applications

The world today produces an enormous amount of data every day. Experts have predicted that
this scenario may also result in a great wave of data or dramatically, even a data tsunami. This
huge amount of data is nowadays known as Big Data. More or less of the data tsunami being
true, we now feel it a necessity to have a tool to have this data in a systematic manner for
applications in various fields including government, scientific research, industry, etc. This will help
in a proper study, storage, and processing of the same. Glue to the Big Data Applications through
this post.
Big Data Applications:

Big data has found many applications in various fields today. The major fields where big data is
being used are as follows.

 GOVERNMENT
Big data analytics has proven to be very useful in the government sector. Big data analysis played
a large role in Barack Obama’s successful 2012 re-election campaign. Also most recently, Big data
analysis was majorly responsible for the BJP and its allies to win a highly successful Indian General
Election 2014. The Indian Government utilizes numerous techniques to ascertain how the Indian
electorate is responding to government action, as well as ideas for policy augmentation.

 SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS

The advent of social media has led to an outburst of big data. Various solutions have been built
in order to analyze social media activity like IBM’s Cognos Consumer Insights, a point solution
running on IBM’s BigInsights Big Data platform, can make sense of the chatter. Social media can
provide valuable real-time insights into how the market is responding to products and
campaigns. With the help of these insights, the companies can adjust their pricing, promotion,
and campaign placements accordingly. Before utilizing the big data there needs to be some
preprocessing to be done on the big data in order to derive some intelligent and valuable results.
Thus to know the consumer mindset the application of intelligent decisions derived from big data
is necessary.
 TECHNOLOGY

The technological applications of big data comprise of the following companies which deal with
huge amounts of data every day and put them to use for business decisions as well. For example,
eBay.com uses two data warehouses at 7.5 petabytes and 40PB as well as a 40PB Hadoop cluster
for search, consumer recommendations, and merchandising. Inside eBay‟s 90PB data warehouse.
Amazon.com handles millions of back-end operations every day, as well as queries from more
than half a million third-party sellers. The core technology that keeps Amazon running is Linux-
based and as of 2005, they had the world’s three largest Linux databases, with capacities of 7.8
TB, 18.5 TB, and 24.7 TB. Facebook handles 50 billion photos from its user base. Windermere Real
Estate uses anonymous GPS signals from nearly 100 million drivers to help new home buyers
determine their typical drive times to and from work throughout various times of the day.

 FRAUD DETECTION

For businesses whose operations involve any type of claims or transaction processing, fraud
detection is one of the most compelling Big Data application examples. Historically, fraud
detection on the fly has proven an elusive goal. In most cases, fraud is discovered long after the
fact, at which point the damage has been done and all that’s left is to minimize the harm and
adjust policies to prevent it from happening again. Big Data platforms that can analyze claims
and transactions in real time, identifying large-scale patterns across many transactions or
detecting anomalous behavior from an individual user, can change the fraud detection game.

Now we turn to the customer-facing Big Data application examples, of which call center analytics
are particularly powerful. What’s going on in a customer’s call center is often a great barometer
and influencer of market sentiment, but without a Big Data solution, much of the insight that a
call center can provide will be overlooked or discovered too late. Big Data solutions can help
identify recurring problems or customer and staff behavior patterns on the fly not only by making
sense of time/quality resolution metrics but also by capturing and processing call content itself.

 BANKING

The use of customer data invariably raises privacy issues. By uncovering hidden connections
between seemingly unrelated pieces of data, big data analytics could potentially reveal sensitive
personal information. Research indicates that 62% of bankers are cautious in their use of big data
due to privacy issues. Further, outsourcing of data analysis activities or distribution of customer
data across departments for the generation of richer insights also amplifies security risks. Such as
customers’ earnings, savings, mortgages, and insurance policies ended up in the wrong hands.
Such incidents reinforce concerns about data privacy and discourage customers from sharing
personal information in exchange for customized offers.

 AGRICULTURE

A biotechnology firm uses sensor data to optimize crop efficiency. It plants test crops and runs
simulations to measure how plants react to various changes in condition. Its data environment
constantly adjusts to changes in the attributes of various data it collects, including temperature,
water levels, soil composition, growth, output, and gene sequencing of each plant in the test bed.
These simulations allow it to discover the optimal environmental conditions for specific gene
types.

 MARKETING
Marketers have begun to use facial recognition software to learn how well their advertising
succeeds or fails at stimulating interest in their products. A recent study published in the Harvard
Business Review looked at what kinds of advertisements compelled viewers to continue watching
and what turned viewers off. Among their tools was “a system that analyses facial expressions to
reveal what viewers are feeling.” The research was designed to discover what kinds of promotions
induced watchers to share the ads with their social network, helping marketers create ads most
likely to “go viral” and improve sales.

 SMART PHONES

Perhaps more impressive, people now carry facial recognition technology in their pockets. Users
of I Phone and Android smartphones have applications at their fingertips that use facial
recognition technology for various tasks. For example, Android users with the remember app can
snap a photo of someone, then bring up stored information about that person based on their
image when their own memory lets them down a potential boon for salespeople.

 TELECOM
Now a day’s big data is used in different fields. In telecom also it plays a very good role. Operators
face an uphill challenge when they need to deliver new, compelling, revenue-generating services
without overloading their networks and keeping their running costs under control. The market
demands new set of data management and analysis capabilities that can help service providers
make accurate decisions by taking into account customer, network context and other critical
aspects of their businesses. Most of these decisions must be made in real time, placing additional
pressure on the operators. Real-time predictive analytics can help leverage the data that resides
in their multitude systems, make it immediately accessible and help correlate that data to
generate insight that can help them drive their business forward.

 HEALTHCARE

Traditionally, the healthcare industry has lagged behind other industries in the use of big data,
part of the problem stems from resistance to change providers are accustomed to making
treatment decisions independently, using their own clinical judgment, rather than relying on
protocols based on big data. Other obstacles are more structural in nature. This is one of the best
place to set an example for Big Data Application.Even within a single hospital, payor, or
pharmaceutical company, important information often remains siloed within one group or
department because organizations lack procedures for integrating data and communicating
findings.

Health care stakeholders now have access to promising new threads of knowledge. This
information is a form of “big data,” so called not only for its sheer volume but for its complexity,
diversity, and timelines. Pharmaceutical industry experts, payers, and providers are now beginning
to analyze big data to obtain insights. Recent technologic advances in the industry have improved
their ability to work with such data, even though the files are enormous and often have different
database structures and technical characteristics.
Conclusion:

Big Data is a powerful tool that makes things ease in various fields as said above. Big data
applications are applied in various fields like banking, agriculture, chemistry, data mining, cloud
computing, finance, marketing, stocks, healthcare, etc.